The Last Summer
by marixoxella
Summary: Ash has lost contact with Brock and Misty for 3 years. What happens on the summer he finally returns? Pokeshipping AAML Rated T to be safe. :


Author's Note: So because I have writer's block when it comes to _Hero_. Hopefully you guys like this, it took me a few days and thanks to Milotic, there are no more typos : ) I LOVE MY BETA 3 There's not much dialogue because it's more of an intro. Yes, for now Ash is a bit OOC, but that will be explained more in the next chapters.

Ages

Misty: 21

Ash: 21

Brock: 27

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon, nor Ash or Misty; it belongs to Pokemon animators like 4Kids and PUSA.

Misty waited for Ash on the ferry dock. He'd left a crackly message on his mother's answering machine saying he'd be coming in on the afternoon boat. That was like him. He couldn't say the 2:30 or the 4:23. She'd spent too long staring at the ferry schedule, trying to divine his meaning.

With some amount of self-hatred, Misty had first walked out onto the dock for the 2:30, knowing he wouldn't be on it. She'd looked on vaguely at the faces as they emerged from the boat, assuring herself she wasn't expecting anything. She'd sat with her bare feet on the bench at the periphery, her sleeping Azurill on her knees so she wouldn't have to interact with anyone. _I know you're not going to be on it, so don't think I think you are, _she'd told the Ash who lived in her mind. Even there, under her presumed control, he was teasing and unpredictable.

For the 4:23, she put lip balm on her lips and ran a hand through her hair. The boat after that wasn't until 7:00, and though Ash could miss the so-called afternoon ferry, he couldn't call 7:00 the afternoon.

How often did she attempt to process his thoughts in her mind? She took his opinions too seriously, remembered them long after she suspected he'd forgotten them.

It was one thing, trying to think his thoughts when he was close by, his words offering clues, corrections, and confirmations by the hour. But three years of silence made it harder, and in another way made it easier. She was freer with his thoughts. She made them her own, thought them to her liking.

He had missed two summers. She couldn't imagine how he could do that. Without him, they had been shadow seasons, for her and for his mother. Feelings were felt thinly, there and then gone. Memories were not made. There was nothing new in sitting on this dock, on this or that wooden bench, watching for his boat to come. In some ways, she was always waiting for him.

She couldn't picture his face when he was gone. Every summer he came back, wearing his same face that she could not remember.

Absently, she saw the people on the dock who came, went and waited. She waved to people she knew in a sort of farewell way, not inviting them over. She felt the wind blow the pounding sun off her shoulders. She slowly dug her thumbnail along the plank of the seat, provoking a splinter but caking up mold and disintegration instead.

When it came to waiting, Brock always had something else to do. Ash was Brock's best friend and Misty knew Brock missed him, too, but he said he didn't like waiting. Misty didn't like waiting either. Nobody did. But Misty was a younger sister. She didn't have the idea of not doing things because you didn't like them.

She watched for the ferry, the way it started out as a little white triangle across the Pallet Town Bay. When it wasn't there, she could hardly imagine it. It was never coming. Then it appeared. It took shape quickly. It was always coming.

She stood. She couldn't help it. She left Azurill on the bench, its round blue tail providing for a comfortably pillow. Would this be him? Was he on there?

She let her hair of out its elastic. She stretched her yellow tank top hoodie down over her hips. She wanted him to see all of her but also none of her. She wanted him to be dazzled by the bits and blinded to the whole. She wanted him to see her whole and not in pieces. She had hopes that were hard to satisfy.

Her legs bounced; her arms clutched her middle. She saw the approach of the old woman in a pink coat who worked at the local Pokemon Center, the grandmother of the Nurse Joys.

"Who are you waiting for, Misty?"

Exposed as she was, the friendly question struck Misty as a cruelty.

"No one," Misty lied awkwardly. The woman's pale face was as familiar to Misty as those of the nurses at the Center, but that didn't mean Misty knew her name. She knew the lady's Chancey was named Alba and that she was the reason Pallet Town now had a Pokemon Center. In a place like this, as a young person, you weren't responsible for the names of elders, thought the elders always knew yours.

The woman looked at Misty's feet, which told the truth. If you were getting on the 4:23, you wore shoes.

Misty self-consciously straggled over the freight area as though she had some purpose there. She didn't lie easily, and doing it now conferred an unwanted intimacy. She preferred to save her lies for those people whose names she knew.

She couldn't look at the boat. She sat back down at the bench, crossing her arms and her legs and bowing her head.

It was a small village at the end of a large continent with customs and rules of its own. Very rarely was anything special produced in Pallet, with the exception of Professor Oak, his grandson and Ash. "No shoes" was the saying that expressed the way of summer. There were no cars and only on certain occasions did people lock their doors. The single place of commerce was the Pokemon Center, which was mostly for trainers anyway.

Shoes meant you were coming or going. Everyone's business came through this ferry dock, with rhythms and hierarchies unlike Viridian or Celadon City. You saw the people as they came and went and waited. You also saw their stuff piled on the dock until they loaded it onto their wagon and rolled it home. You knew what kind of toilet paper they bought. Misty hung around Pallet Town much too long to not notice.

Where you went, who you went with. Who you waited for at the ferry dock. Who you brushed your hair for. You were exposed here, but you were also safe.

The carelessness of the place had always appealed to Misty, the reason why she felt so comfortable staying here, as if it were her second home.

The ferry put an extra emphasis on coming and going. Adults went back and forth all the time, but there had been so many summers when Misty and Brock had come and gone only once. They came to Pallet with paler skin, not Brock so much as Misty, tired bodies but excited souls. They left with darker, freckled skin; tangled hair, foot bottoms thick as tires; and heavy hearts.

She remembered the hellos, and she remembered the good-byes even more. End-of-summer tradition dictated that whoever was last to leave Pallet saluted departing friends by jumping into the water as the ferry pulled away.

Now she heard the boat grinding up behind her. She loosened her arms and pressed her hands against the wood, making sure not to stir the still-slumbering Pokemon. She heard the slapping of the wake against the pilings as the boat came around. She untucked her leg and bounced her free heel on he plank in front of her.

Misty would've liked to do the arriving instead of the waiting. She would have rather done the leaving than the getting left, but that was never the way it happened. For some reason it was always Misty who waited and Misty who dove in.

--

The ferry was like a time capsule, in a way. A space capsule. It sent you and your fellow canvas-bag travelers through a wormhole, the same one every time.

Ash stood on the top deck in the wet wind as the tiny houses of Pallet's south shore gave way to dark, briny water.

The thick feeling of the air began when you stepped onto the ferry. The stickiness over every surface. His hair blew around and he thought of Misty, fishing in her backpack for an elastic. He could picture her anchoring various things in her mouth as she pulled back her hair. He'd had short hair then, and though he admired her skill at tying her hair in the wind, he'd thought it was needless. Now his hair was long.

The first sighting was the lighthouse, and second was Professor Oak's Laboratory. This lab set his standard for all others, and the others looked stout and dumpy by comparison. You loved what you knew. You couldn't help it. He couldn't, though he did try.

She would be there. If she was still Misty, she would be there. If Brock was still Brock, he would not. He had called, so if Misty didn't come, it would mean something. If she did come, it would mean something also. He wished he hadn't called, in a way. The old staging unnerved him, but after all this time he couldn't just sneak up on Misty.

He could imagine that she hadn't checked his house phone's messages, but he knew Misty to be heartrendingly on top of the messages. As though she was always waiting for something good and something bad.

Now the sweeter, older coast of the island emerged, coughed up by the bay in time for his arrival. He discerned the wide, curling arm of the dock. He saw the figures on it. He knew Brock would be the same. By the letters he wrote, Ash could tell Brock would look and sound the same. But the idea of a twenty-one-year-old Misty scared him.

Would his mother and Professor Oak be there? Could he contend with the whole bunch of them on such a narrow tatter of land stuck out here between the ocean and the bay? Would they be angry that he had continued his Pokemon journey after Sinnoh without glancing back at his hometown at all? What would they say about Ash finally teaching Pikachu to get in its Pokeball?

Now the shapes of the houses grew and sharpened, and the faces on the dock tuned toward the boat expectantly—a bunch of circles without features at first. He unstuck himself from the bench, stretched his legs. He felt the chill sweat of his fingers knitted around the handle of his duffel bag.

Without quite giving himself the go-ahead, he started scanning the faces. The older ones were most familiar. The old fisherman that never moved from his spot on the harbor, the old woman in the pink coat—what was her name?—who founded the first Pokemon Center in Pallet Town only two years ago. The children were impossible to identify, and the bodies between old and young he feared to scrutinize. Would her hair have gotten darker or lighter? Could her shape have changed?

No, and no, obviously. At this distance, closing in at this speed, you knew a person by her posture, by her bright red hair, and by certain other unnamable qualities, but those weren't and couldn't be hers. Maybe she hadn't come. Maybe she wasn't even in Pallet. But what could make Misty not come? Maybe the gym that was now completely taken over by her sisters, her help no longer needed?

He scanned the small cluster again, resenting the spasmodic activity of his eyeballs. What if she was different now? What if he couldn't keep his old idea of her?

And then he noticed another girl, off to the side, away from the group of people, half-curled on a bench, one foot tucked under her. But her back was to him, and unlike the others, she didn't turn to face the boat. The hair color, however, was undeniable.

As the ferry pulled around the hook of the dock, the sitting girl stood. Her hair blew around her face, obscuring it. Maybe that was the reason he continued to imagine her a stranger even after he got close enough to see.

For a few moments, both frantic and calm, he watched her carefully, feeling a tingle in the old, blocked-off passageways. He felt the neurons firing in the part of his brain responsible for present perception but also in the part devoted to memory.

Maybe that was why a strange overload took place just then, when he recognized her and didn't recognize her at the same time. Ideas and feelings rushed in that he might have rather kept out.

--

"Hey," he said to her.

She hugged him, putting her chin on his shoulder and her face toward the lighthouse. It wasn't the kind of thing they did—ever. It wasn't so much intimacy that provoked this hug, but the need to not look at the other's face.

She couldn't really feel anything of him or focus her eyes exactly. Her body was numb and her eyes confused her. In a moment of lucidity, she feared he could feel her heart pounding and she pulled away.

She put her head down and gestured to his bag, "Is that everything?"

"That's it." He sounded almost rueful. She wanted to check his face, but he was looking straight at her, so she didn't.

What was the matter with her? It was just him! It was the same old Ash. But it also wasn't. He was the strangest of strangers in that he was also her oldest friend.

"Is it heavy?" she found herself saying.

"No. Its fine," he replied, and she thought she heard the seed of a laugh in his voice. Was he going to laugh at her? He used to do that. He teased and laughed at her without relent. Then again, so did she. But if he did that now, she would die.

She'd intended to feel cold toward him this time. For leaving for so long and forgetting her. _Did you forget me? _She was good at being angry with him when he was away, but in his presence she never could be for very long.

She forged ahead and he followed. The old woman in the pink coat was unlocking her wagon and the old fisherman still sat at the edge of the dock, staring down at the water. If she raised her head, she would see others. They all knew Ash. Would they recognize him with his long clumpy hair and his tall stature?

All the things she planned to feel, the way she planned to look and seem, the appropriate things she planned to say. None of them came to pass.

"Let's go find Brock," he said from behind her, and her heart thrilled with relief. That was what they could do. That would make sense of it.

She offered him his mother's bike and got on her own. He balanced his duffel bag awkwardly over the basket and attempted to maneuver up the skinny boardwalk ahead of her but was unable as she glided past him, the tiny blue Azurill in her basket with the grace of a true Cerulean girl. Misty used to ride three bikes at once. She could carry items in her arms while riding with no hands.

They rode directly to the Pokemon Center, knowing this would be where Brock spent most of his days. Ash locked the bike on a light post, peeling off his shoes and socks. Misty followed his suit, carrying Azurill in her arms and leading the way into the Center. Because it was such a small town, not much went on at the Center. Two trainers were sitting on the couches, waiting for their Pokemon to recover while Chanceys were idly wandering through the halls, quite bored with such little work to do.

Brock wasn't hard to find. The frightened Nurse Joy manning the reception desk tried her best to not leave. The tanned twenty-five-year-old leaned over, whispering sonnets of love to the pink haired woman while caressing her outstretched hand.

Ash gave Misty a mischievous smile that she returned with not as much fervor and he treaded silently behind his older friend. With a quick tug, Ash grabbed Brock's ear and pulled back as hard as he could, receiving the results he was aiming for.

"Geez Misty, give me a break!" Brock fumed and turned to his ear-puller, "At least some of us try—ASH!"

Misty raised an eyebrow in interest as she saw the brotherly love between the best friends. While Ash was being squeezed to death, Brock blabbered on and on about where he had been, what he was doing and how long he would stay. After a few seconds, Ash could breathe again and looked up at his friend, grinning.

"Good to see ya, Brocko," the younger male patted the other on the back and ran a hand through his long hair. "Recognize me?"

"Recognize you?!" Brock laughed out loud, "Even with that overgrown forest on your head, I can recognize you a mile away!"

"Thanks, that means a lot." The boys turned to Misty, who shrugged slightly.

"Ready to go home, Ash?" Her words made his heart lift.

--

In the old days, Ash came downstairs in his pajamas to fight for the good cereal. Misty suspected it was one of the few battles he had a more equal chance of winning or losing. The point was getting there early.

His house was larger than most in Pallet. It had seven bedrooms and a TV; it was clean and had a shelf full of good cereal. From Misty's earliest memory of this house, nobody ever fought for cereal without making a mess. Even now she wondered how Mrs. Ketchum ever managed to keep the place clean.

Ash did appear that morning, though not in his pajamas. He wore a pair of pants so black and stiff that they almost made Misty laugh. Almost. But she checked herself, wondering if that was the kind of thing they did anymore.

He came the customary way, bounding down the steps loudly, with high hopes that he would be served food.

"Did you eat yet?" Misty asked casually, caring too much about small things.

"No." He looked mildly chastened. "I'm fine, though. You don't have to feed me."

She rolled her eyes and pushed a box of Rice Krispies toward him, along with a bowl and spoon. He seemed to forget his own words as he poured the cereal eagerly.

"Milk?" She asked, holding it up.

"Thanks." He took it gratefully.

Her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand, Misty watched him eat. He never minded being watched.

"Seriously, man, what's with the hair?" Brock finally pointed out seriously, no joking in his voice, passing through the kitchen on his way to help do the Ketchum's laundry. It was what he did to thank Mrs. Ketchum for allowing him and Misty to stay regardless of whether Ash was back or not. She understood their need to be there, the comfort they derived from the place.

"It grew," Ash finally answered, crunching away complacently.

"Just like that?"

"Yeah, like that."

Silence.

"Mine doesn't grow like that," Misty pointed out.

"Because you probably wash yours and brush it."

"I do, actually."

"Well, then."

Misty was slightly taken aback by these reserved answers from someone who was rarely ever reserved.

"It doesn't look good," Brock pointed out honestly, a towel bunched under his arm.

"I know," Ash said, staring at the pieces of Krispies rolling around in his bowl. "It's kind of itchy. I think I'll cut it for the summer."

He put down his spoon and looked at Misty. "Do you still have those scissors?"

Misty knew exactly which ones he was talking about. On their past journeys, she, being the girl in the group, had decided to take responsibility for the appearance of her little triplet.

She began shaking the cereal box around to see if there was enough left for another bowl. "Yes. Do you want to borrow them?"

"Can you do it?" he asked.

Misty put the box down. She uncrossed her ankles and chewed the inside of her cheek. "Can I cut your hair, you mean?"

"Yeah, you know you're rather good at it."

Once upon a time, she'd removed wads of gum and nettles as a favor to Brock and Ash. She had also given the boys and herself a hair cut, making her now very good at it, but that was a long time ago. Could she cut his hair? If not, why couldn't she?

"Nothing fancy," he added quickly, glancing at the unsure expression on her face.

"C'mon, give Ash his old hair back, Misty," Brock suggested.

"I guess I could do it."

Ash stood, looking at her expectantly.

"Right now?" Now was not a good time as later, when he would forget about it.

"Yes. Is that okay?"

Somewhat mechanically, she followed him up the stairs. They had just one bathroom, and she and Brock were locked in a long-term stand off about whose turn it was to clean it. Ash sat on the edge of the tub, just the way he used to.

Brock stood in the doorway, a look of amusement on his face. The scissors were there in the cabinet, still rust-free in the original plastic case she had kept all those years. She wished they weren't both watching her. It felt embarrassing to tend to one's scissors so well.

"Okay. So…" Misty began, "Just, uh…"

"Cut it off." Ash pulled his T-shirt over his head, which didn't help put her at ease. She had to force herself into the orbit of his head. His face now related to her chest as her chest as hers usually did to his. He looked up at her, and she felt as though she were made of nostrils.

"Not all of it…?" She couldn't stand to make him bald.

"Just like the old me, Mist." His grin made her knees grow weak.

"I think you'll find wildfire in there," Brock commented jokingly, as if to scare her.

Misty nodded. That wasn't the thing she worried about. You couldn't spend half of your childhood with boys and still be a sissy.

It was funny the things the three of them talked about. Often it was the concrete things they hung upon. Concrete or metaphysical, and very little in between. That was another leftover, a child's prerogative, in a way. They talked about Pokemon and they talked about life in general. But it was all the stuff in the middle that came to preoccupy you as you grew older.

The previous night, the rain had pelted against the tar shingles and they'd talked for hours on the Ketchum's living room floor. They talked about the big storms, the houses that washed away; they talked about Gary and joked about the silly problems they had faced as children. They'd talked about the sameness of Pallet Town regardless of time. Misty felt relieved Mrs. Ketchum was upstairs sleeping so it was just the three of them, the way it used to be. It allowed them the freedom to let the conversation meander and stall. It allowed them to leave out large categories of discussion, such as what they'd been doing for the last three years.

Misty held up her scissors and snapped at the air a few times. She touched her hand to the top of his head for a start. It was warm and made her think of the old days. She felt the stubble of his chin against her forearm. She had the feeling of crying creeping up her throat. How she had missed him. Sometimes you couldn't face the sadness of being forgotten until you felt the conform of being remembered again.

"Well, here goes," she said a little faintly. She grasped a clump of his black hair and cut. Sharp scissors against hair made a wonderful sound, a soft, multitudinous zing. She remembered that she had always liked it.

Underneath the grime, Ash's hair was as fine as it had been when he was younger, in spite of how he'd mistreated it. Each piece she cut at the base of the clump curled sweetly and lay down on his head. It was more docile, less complicated than the other parts of him.

"What do you think?" she asked, adverting to Brock.

Brock was standing still for longer than usual. He looked at the mess of tangles and clumps on the linoleum floor. "He has to clean it up." He said it amicably, seeming to indicate approval.

Brock went back downstairs and they heard the screen door slam and settle.

Misty held a clump at the nape of Ash's neck and made him shiver. Delicately, she cut pieces around his ear, admiring the pale silky fuzz that sprouted along the edge. It wasn't just now. These things had always meant something to her.

"You're being very still," she complimented him.

She didn't think he'd heard her at first, even though she was inches from his ear. "I'm trying," he finally said.

She came around to the front last, bold now in her barber persona. She held his chin to steady her cutting hand against his cheek, perhaps not strictly by necessity. She looked at his cheek, his jaw, and felt the reassurance of being near him.

Misty fell into a meditative mood, lulled by the sound of her scissors. She evened, trimmed, shaped, and smoothed. She felt a fullness in her heart and in her throat. She felt his head loosening on his neck, giving in to her hands, trusting her.

How long since she had felt this particular feeling in her muscles? She'd forgotten what it was like.

In spite of everything, she felt a sort of sympathy for him. She always had. Even though he was annoying and self-righteous and arrogant at times. Even though he teased and mocked and even forgot her, she still ached for him. Maybe it was because his father died. Maybe it because she knew what it was like to not have a male figurehead around.

Misty never knew Ash's father because he had died long before she had ever met Ash.

It terrified Misty to talk about Ash's father, because she knew things she shouldn't have known. She knew things Ash had not told her, things he probably didn't know. Misty hated that and almost faulted Mrs. Ketchum for having told her the whole story in these past three years of summer visits.

Ash almost never talked about his father, and when he did, he acted as though he remembered him perfectly. But Misty noticed that he didn't talk about the small things.

Misty suspected Ash couldn't really picture him, just like she couldn't picture Ash when he was away. Maybe that was the case with people you wanted more than was good for you.

Misty let her scissors clatter into the sink. She stood still, her hands on his head, one over his ear, the other at the back. She let out her breath as his head sank slowly into her body, coming to rest at her abdomen.

She held him there, her head bowed to his. She felt the bones of his cheek and chin against her shirt, the bits of stubble catching in the weave of the cotton, her breath pooling in the wrinkles.

He was with her, he was here. She was scared to even breathe.

The screen door rattled in the kitchen. He lifted his head. She stepped back. And just like that, he wasn't with her anymore.

The air that had enclosed them re-formed around them as separate bodies. He looked at her for a moment but said nothing. She retrieved her scissors and with shaking hands put them back into their plastic case.

He stood and regarded himself in the mirror.

"Nice job," he said to her and she realized he had completed the transformation back into the Ash she knew. They had done it together. From strange, foreign Ash, he'd returned to the beloved, exacting Ash of old.

But there was a moment in between, a moment flung free in the midst of the transition, when he had made contact. That was the moment she would dwell on.

--

For the first time in months, his head lay comfortably in a pillow and his scalp did not itch. But even so, Ash couldn't sleep, and this, too, he attributed to his haircut.

He pictured, or rather felt, Misty's toe kicking into the side of his foot. He could feel the pressure of her palm on his head and her fingers on his chin. When she bent over him, he smelled a new Misty smell, perhaps cleaner than the old Misty smell but still related and deeply stirring.

That was the thing that overtook him, when he'd pressed his head against her body. Why had he done that? What had it meant? It wasn't the kind of thing you did to any girl. You couldn't take it back. You could try to discount it. You could pretend it hadn't happened. But it was there between them. Thankfully, though, the rest of the day had seemed to constitute an implicit agreement to a mutual amnesia.

His distress and pleasure mixed and married, giving birth to several anxious children. Maybe he shouldn't have come back here so soon. But what else did he have left to do after—

Ash blocked the thought quickly. The trick was to have what he had without destroying it, if that was possible. Could you even do that? Every desire fulfilled was thus defeated. Could you interrupt the cycle? Could you make the world hold still?

There was nothing new in caring for Misty. He had always cared about her, even when he was mean. He remembered it, and he had been told so. He'd cared about her before she even realized it. Wasn't that the easiest way to care for someone that at the same time drove you crazy?

When he thought of Misty, especially while lying in this bed, he thought often of the summer breaks he, Brock and she had spent in this house, exhausted from a year long of travels through distant lands. Staying up late in rolled out beds on the living room floor, whispering and giggling when his mother would come downstairs to scold them for being too loud, going to Professor Oak's lab to check on Ash's Pokemon.

As a band of children they would trek through the rolling hills of Pallet Town, searching for Pokemon, only to have Misty drag them back home after an encounter with one too many bugs. Back then, the trio knew everything about each other, from the freckle on Ash's left knee to Brock's obsession with women to Misty's drawn-out pain at the loss of her Togepi.

But time went on, as it will, and the seasons changed. And they were now strangers; Ash had stopped informing Misty and Brock of his travels years ago. The new adventures, the Pokemon, the people. He went ahead and lived those seasons, all the while feeling that his real life lay here in this house, in the summer with Misty and Brock.

What was powerful at ten and even fifteen should have grown quaint by twenty-one, and yet, this bond had durability. It still existed between them. He could feel it even now. You could go away for months or years, but it was still here, bound to what you loved, binding you to it.

Misty kept it out of loyalty and… Something more that Ash couldn't quite touch on. For Brock, it was more like a brotherly connection. And for him?

For him, what he'd had here in this town with Misty and Brock was the best and most lasting thing in his life.


End file.
